


wanderings of the sea

by hannieks



Series: klance oneshots [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, i love my bbys but i had to write this ok, rip earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannieks/pseuds/hannieks
Summary: After the intergalactic war leaves him in love with one of the seven humans left, he doesn't dream. Why would he,when there's such a sleeping beauty (snoring really fucking loudly) right beside him?





	wanderings of the sea

**Author's Note:**

> yo reader, want some dank klangst?  
> lmao not rly, it's full of keith being hella in love with lance because of course, who isn't
> 
> uhhh this has only been through one edit, so pls point out if i've dun goofed thankyou
> 
> mood music and title is angels by crywolf
> 
> enjoy!

He awakens to sunlight shining directly into his eyes. It radiates as bright as Lance’s smile, the dawn of the day ahead of, them despite Keith feeling as if he fell asleep only a split-second previous.

He's too warm and too comfortable to bother going through sitting up, leaning over to their window, and pulling their curtains shut, so he leaves them be. It's not like he'll be able to fall asleep again, anyway.

If he recalls correctly, Lance threw them open them three hours and twenty-seven minutes after midnight, with blown pupils and shaking hands, desperate to breathe fresh air, to escape their stuffy room and the terrors of his mind.

When he’d calmed down and back into coherency, he'd apologised profusely for waking him up. Keith hadn't slept. Instead, he occupied himself by recounting the shadows of leaves on their walls, assuring himself they weren't the looming silhouette of an enemy. But his sweetheart didn't know that, and he wasn't about to correct Lance, not when all he'd do is worry about him more.

Being the head of Voltron for half a decade fucked him up in more ways than anyone is aware of because Keith doesn't dream, not anymore. For a while, after the war ended, he'd wake in a cold sweat every night without fail, ears ringing and mind reeling with the last images of lives he could've saved.

Now? He doesn't dream, refuses to drift away long enough to. If sleep deprivation is what he has to sacrifice to keep running from the demons torturing his subconscious, the spirits of those he's killed, he's happy to compromise.

Not that it isn’t a pain in the neck, sometimes - all he wants nowadays is to truly relax, and Lance chews him out like a boyfriend possessed whenever Keith fails to hide the dark smudges under his eyes, or when he's too exhausted to stifle his yawns. It pleases him to know that somewhere, deep down, the bubbly personality he fell in love with is still there, as vibrant as it was when they were seventeen. Since the war ended Lance has been so subdued, almost stunned, by what had happened.

And yeah, he sleeps a full night more often than he'd like to admit, whether accidental or because otherwise he'll be denied privileges of laying beside Lance, in their bed.

Even now they all have their off days, all with their own ways of dealing with ghosts of the past.

Keith deals with them by beating the ever-loving shit out of the Castle’s gladiators and, occasionally, a Galra ship or two. But the Empire is nothing more than an overtaken moon here or there, easy to take out and defeat.

Violence just isn't enough for the man sleeping next to him, sprawled on the bed without a care in the world, snoring softly with one hand laced tightly in Keith's own. Unlike himself, Lance had an entire family living on Earth before it was destroyed.

They had been oh so careful, never even tried to make contact, never spoke of it near communicators. Even the Alteans didn't know much about the planet.

It happened nonetheless, and none of them ever truly recovered, even if the uninhabited planet with blue skies and bluer oceans that they took refuge on can sometimes fool them for their home.

Dust motes float gently across the room. Lance's face is close to his own, mesmeric freckles dotting his cheeks, hair ruffled from sleep, overwhelmingly gorgeous.

It's sad, really. How, by just... being, Lance can make him stare at him like he's a blind man looking at the sun for the first time, unable to glance away even for a second.

He wonders whether this is what love feels like, but 'love' seems too simple a word to describe the blossoms of adoration in his chest.

Keith feels his lion's comforting presence nearby, learns with relief that she's still sitting pretty in her hangar, and by force of habit he checks the other's energies too, checking that they still have all of their lions.

And all of their paladins.

(For a split second, he relives the terror of discovering what they thought was his brother was an imposter, with the coordinates of their home planet. By the time they’d wormholes there the planet was nothing but dust.)

Yes. For this one moment, Keith can ignore his yearning for sleep, turn away from the pain in his right shoulder that no healing pod will ever fix.

Lance is the only one able to distract him from himself, and every morning he does it's like a new miracle all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> b i t t e r s w e e t  
> almost as bitter as me over shiro's vlog not being out yet, ugh  
> find me on twitter @samuraiklance  
> thanks so much for reading!!


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